Should We Still Teach Dictionary?

  • academic vocabulary dictionary skills
  • 09 July, 2022
  • 5 Comments

Teacher question:

I hope you can help me as I have learned, and continue to learn, new things from your blog. Is there any benefit to using dictionaries in middle school? Is there any research you can share that discusses the pros/cons of using a dictionary in middle school? The students are native speakers, but there are some ELLs.

Shanahan replies:

The value of the dictionary depends upon your purpose.

If the idea is to teach word meanings or to facilitate reading comprehension, then provide the definitions directly Wright & Cervetti, 2017). All the looking-things-up and choosing among definitions increases “cognitive load.” That is, the dictionary tasks distract attention from learning the word meanings. It may waste valuable class time, too. Reducing dictionary demands on middle school students can be beneficial – if the goal is to improve comprehension or to focus attention on the word meanings (Yeung, 1999). [Though for counterevidence on this see Peters, Hulstijn, Sercu, & Lutjeharms, 2009 and Wang, 2012 that report studies of dictionary work that clearly enhanced vocabulary learning.]

That’s why many textbooks include definitions of key vocabulary in the margins. Technology is helpful here to, allowing students to click on a word to find its definition. By those means, publishers provide access to definitions without requiring students to wrestle with dictionaries. Those tools help (Reinking & Rickman, 1990).

But, of course, there is more to it than that. Students should be learning to turn to the dictionary during reading when they’re in a spot and it’s worthwhile to make them sufficiently proficient enough to overcome that cognitive load problem.

All students can gain from dictionaries (Hamilton, 2012), but the benefits of dictionary use are most obvious for English Learners because of their limited knowledge of English vocabulary. Studies show that ELs tend to do better when provided with dictionaries and generally report positive (though small effects) from dictionary availability despite all the barriers: cumbersome access, lack of clear definitions, unclear connections to context.

Unfortunately, dictionary use hasn’t generated much research, especially with native language speakers. The research that is there has tended to take a decided anti-dictionary stance. For instance, copying definitions from a dictionary is often the control condition in vocabulary learning studies (National Reading Panel, 2000). Not surprisingly, dictionary copying doesn’t do much towards that purpose – there are many better ways to build vocabulary.

Nevertheless, a serious commitment to a strong vocabulary program will include five elements: explicit instruction in word meanings, context use, dictionary/thesaurus use, morphology, and the development of word consciousness (being aware of when you don’t know word meanings).

In my personal experience – both as student and teacher – dictionary instruction can be pretty bad, with a lot of emphasis on looking up words (e.g., alphabetical order, guide words, parts of dictionary entries) and little energy devoted to making sense of definitions or choosing the relevant ones. Technology has eased the “looking up” burden but the rest of it is still an issue. These days I use electronic dictionaries often, but I still am responsible for the interpretive tasks).

There has been much work on providing child friendly definitions in vocabulary instruction and there is no question that offering easy to understand definitions is sensible (Gardner, 2007). But have you ever seen a reading comprehension lesson focused on how to read dictionary definitions? I haven’t and I’ve been doing this for quite a while.

Kids simply don’t know how to make sense of what they find in dictionaries – the benefits of gaining information from each of the multiple definitions, and the need (sometimes) to look up additional words to make sense of a definition (Mueller & Jacobsen, 2016; Ranalli, 2013; St-Jacques & Barrière, 2005). For instance, if you look up “joy” you will quickly be confronted with the word “emotion,” a harder word, I think, than the one you were trying to figure out. I’d sure love to see some guided reading lessons aimed at dictionary text.

Dictionary instruction can provide a great opportunity to explore the grammatical relations among words (e.g., imagination, imagined, imaginative, imaginatively), too – something my morphological friends surely appreciate

I remember those definition copying exercises I did as a boy. Whatever the teacher’s purpose, I admit I never sought the “relevant” definition. No, my goal was to find the shortest one; less copying that way. I’d have benefited greatly from some lessons in choosing definitions pertinent to the reading context. Never happened and I doubt that it happens much these days either and that’s a shame.

Dictionary lessons of those types will not increase vocabulary – other instruction must tend to that. But those lessons will provide students with the proficiency that they need to solve unknown words during reading and that’s a good thing.

Indeed, I’d teach dictionary.

References

Gardner, D. (2007). Children's immediate understanding of vocabulary: Contexts and dictionary definitions. Reading Psychology, 28(4), 331-373. doi.org/10.1080/02702710701260508

Hamilton, H. (2012). The efficacy of dictionary use while reading for learning new words. American Annals of the Deaf, 157(4), 358-372.  

Mueller, C. M., & Jacobsen, N. D. (2016). A comparison of the effectiveness of EFL students’ use of dictionaries and an online corpus for the enhancement of revision skills. ReCALL: Journal of Eurocall, 28(1), 3-21. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344015000142

Peters, E., Hulstijn, J. H., Sercu, L., & Lutjeharms, M. (2009). Learning L2 German vocabulary through reading: The effect of three enhancement techniques compared. Language Learning, 59(1), 113-151.

Ranalli, J. (2013). Online strategy instruction for integrating dictionary skills and language awareness. Language Learning & Technology, 17(2), 75-99.

Reinking, D., & Rickman, S. S. (1990). The effects of computer-mediated texts on the vocabulary learning and comprehension of intermediate-grade readers. Journal of Reading Behavior, 22(4), 395-411.

St-Jacques, C., & Barrière, C. (2005). Search by fuzzy inference in a children's dictionary. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18(3), 193-215. doi.org/10.1080/09588220500173377

Wang, J. (2012). The use of e-dictionary to read e-text by intermediate and advanced learners of Chinese. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 25(5), 475-487. doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2011.631144

Wright, T. S., & Cervetti, G. N. (2017). A systematic review of the research on vocabulary instruction that impacts text comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(2), 203-226. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.163

Yeung, A. S. (1999). Cognitive load and learner expertise: Split-attention and redundancy effects in reading comprehension tasks with vocabulary definitions. Journal of Experimental Education, 67(3), 197–217.

Comments

See what others have to say about this topic.

ROBERT PARKS Jul 09, 2022 05:33 PM

Dictionaries can be thought of as a summary of the ways a word has been used in general writing. (Dictionaries usually don't include specialized disciplinary texts in their corpora.) The different senses in a dictionary reflect the needs of different situations a word has been used in. One way to take a more creative approach is to use a vocabulary notebook, and a graphic organizer such as the "Concept of Definition" model, or the "Frayer Model". Another exercise is to ask students to make their own dictionary of words they use or hear, but don't find in the dictionary. For their dictionary, students can also make up a word and define it for themselves. Its a great exercise in describing aspects of their lives they can't find a word for. (Or perhaps there are untranslatable words an ELL can provide to fit the gap in the English lexicon.)

Thomas E. Zurinskas Jul 09, 2022 08:00 PM

Nothing about a pronunciation guide? Interestingly the VOA simplifies pronunciation for English not using IPA but it's own method. And since the VOA is an official American institution this method most be the official phonetic method of the USA for English. See https://justpaste.it/voaspel

Linda Cherubino Jul 09, 2022 08:32 PM

I always tell my middle and high school students to use the dictionary.com app each and every time they come to a word they don't know and - most importantly - to scroll down to the word origin and notice the root. The roots open up a world of literal and figurative meanings of so many related words.

Yvonne Brooke Payne Jul 12, 2022 02:31 AM

I teach the dictionary to severe dyslexic students for the purpose of solidifying alphabetical order. Speed drills looking for the word seem to be a fun alphabet exercise. (Not babyish). Many kids haven't ever used a dictionary... It is hard to see 12+ years old struggling with alphabet, but it is definitely a problem.

Kathryn Barefoot Jul 22, 2022 12:13 PM

As an educator for almost 40 years now, I believe students should always be taught with books, pencil, and paper as an alternative to the convenience of technology in case students do not have access to that particular technology. I could give countless examples of why this is essential but my favorite one to tell is when my seventh graders were taking a test with no phones and they didn't know how much time they had left to complete it because the only clock in the wall was analog......

What Are your thoughts?

Leave me a comment and I would like to have a discussion with you!

Comment *
Name*
Email*
Website
Comments

Should We Still Teach Dictionary?

5 comments

One of the world’s premier literacy educators.

He studies reading and writing across all ages and abilities. Feel free to contact him.